December 2019
American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America, by Colin Woodard. 2011.
Thoughts / Questions
- Impact of (1) religion, and (2) experience of war/oppression on culture of ethnoregional populations
- Importance of ability to expand to maintain dominance of a nation – eclipse of Tidewater; New Netherlands
- Why was New France not more successful at expansion and dominance?
- Environment trumps ethnoregionalism in establishment of Far West
- How does this analysis apply to the upcoming presidential contest?
- The book leaves me of two minds: one the one hand, it strikes me that the existence of the US as it is today is the result of many low probability events; on the other hand, it leaves me feeling that the US is more robust than it may seem – e.g., a lot of awful people, events and processes have not ‘destroyed’ the country or culture. Andrew Jackson and Woodrow Wilson seem no worse than Trump
- It is striking that sometimes individuals can make all the difference: William Penn, and Samuel de Champlain.
- Impact of policies: Spanish colonial policies on El Norte; internal colonization policies on Far West.
- Impact of the Netherlands on US history and institutions
C1: Founding El Norte
“Colonial El Norte was the neglected, far flung borderland of a distant, collapsing empire, and would remain so for a quarter of a millennium.” The settlements in El Norte were isolated from one another, by design, with trade between them prohibited by Spain, and discouraged by vast distances.
The main driver of the colonization was the Spanish empire’s religious mission, and it spread by the establishment of self-sufficient missions with religious and military personnel which indoctrinated local populations and turned them into feudally governed workforces. Because the Spanish empire was failing and had few resources to spare, and because of the inefficiency of the colonization approach, “the communities tended not to grow as malnutrition, smallpox and syphilis kept mortality high and childbirths low.”
Most Hispanics came to the new world because they were told to. There was no self government, with religious and military leaders holding power; in the few towns authority came to be held by a self perpetuating oligarchy of the wealthiest citizens. Ordinary people were expected to give their loyalty to their local patron, who provided employment, welfare, and sponsored religious activities. Most Spanish colonists were male, and as a consequence took native wives. By the early 1700’s, the majority of the population of Mexico and El Norte was mestizo, and thus the caste system that shaped society in Spain had little impact in El Norte.
The open range cattle industry originated in El Norte and was based on Spanish precedents, as was the use of mounted vaqueros to round up, herd, brand and drive large numbers of cattle on open range. It was the Franciscan’s who introduced cowboy culture (in contravention to Spanish laws prohibiting Indians from riding horses), because tallow and hides were one of the few products they could profitably produce for export.
“By spearheading the effort to snuff out the Protestant Reformation, the Spanish had earned the lasting hatred of the English, Scots and Dutch, who regarded them as the decadent unthinking tools of the Vatican’s conspiracy to enslave the world. This virulent anti-Spanish feeling became deeply engrained in the cultures of Yankeedom, Appalachia, Tidewater and the deep South.”
C2: Founding New France
A French expedition landed in eastern Maine in 1604, and founded a colony on an island in the St Croix. It was led by a French noble, Pierre Dugua, the sieur de Mons, and a commoner, Samuel de Champlain, thought to be the illegitimate son of the French King. They both had radical, if somewhat different visions, for New France. de Mons envisioned a feudal society, but one which allowed commoners to hunt, fish, practice their own religions, and be upwardly mobile. Champlain shared the vision of a feudal society, but also believed it should coexist in a friendly, respectful alliance with Native American nations. “They would intentionally settle near the Indians, learn their customs, and establish alliances and trade based on honesty, fair dealing, and mutual respect.” Champlain wanted to bring Christianity and other aspects of French civilization to Native Americans, but wanted to accomplish this by persuasion and example; he also thought inter-marriage was not only tolerable but desirable.
When the colony was founded, it had a rough first winter but was saved by food provided by the Native Americans. The French ‘gentlemen’ tended to ignore the French commoners, but treated the Indians as equals and invited them to feasts and plays, and in turn were invited to Indian events, and learned Native American languages and practices such as making canoes and snowshoeing. This pattern was repeated in 1608, when Champlain founded Quebec. Furthermore, he sent young men to live with the Indians to learn their languages and practices, and the Indians reciprocated. Other Frenchmen repeated this pattern, due to the shortage of female colonists. Eventually, “New France became as much an aboriginal society as a French one and would eventually help pass this quality on to Canada itself.”
In 1663 the French King attempted to establish a more feudal society in New France, by sending large number of impoverished people to work as indentured servants. However, few accepted their assigned roles as peasants once their indentures were completed, and instead fled the fields to live in the woods. “But the end of the seventeenth century, roughly one-third of indentured servants had taken to the forests and increasing numbers of well-bred men were following them.”
Chapter 3: Founding Tidewater
Jamestown was founded in 1607, and was a disastrous effort. It was manned by a mix of gentlemen adventurers and forcibly deported indigents, none of whom were knowledgeable about or inclined to farm. They expected to succeed in the way that the Spanish had – accreting worshipful natives to do their bidding — but instead arrived in the midst of a strong confederation of 20 tribes and 24,000 people ruled by chief Powhatan. The confederation resisted extortion by the colonists, although it was eventually overcome by wave upon wave of colonists, attracted by the profitable enterprise of tobacco plantations (and fueled by the aristocrats on the losing side of the English Civil War).
The Tobacco plantations required a lot of labor provided by indentured workers; the conditions were terrible, with a mortality rate of up to 30% a year. Those who survived indenture received land, tools and freedom – and while most were white there were some of African descent (perhaps by way of New Amsterdam), the interesting point being that Virginia did not start out as a racially-based slave society.
The goal of the elites in Virginia and Maryland was to re-create the genteel manor life of rural England – and by the early 17th Century they had largely succeeded in creating a pastoral landscape with manors and a hereditary elite that controlled all aspects of society. It became increasingly difficult for the gentry to recruit commoners to work their land, and so they turned to the form of slavery recently introduced into the deep south from the Caribbean colonies. There were no towns other the Jamestown and St Mary’s City until the end of the 17th Century, and even these remained villages of a few hundred for a long time.
Chapter 4: Founding Yankeedom
The dominant colonies of New England were founded by Puritans intent on creating a religious utopia based on the teachings of John Calvin. Nearly half of Yankeedom’s early settlers came from East Anglica, the most economically sophisticated part of Britain, and a region profoundly influenced by the Netherlands, which lay just across the English channel.
In particular, during the 1630’s, 25,000 Puritans migrated from Britain due to their unwillingness to compromise. The Puritan emigres were led not by noblemen but by an elite distinguished by their education. They were opposed to aristocracy and the conspicuous display of wealth and its leaders did not hand out massive swaths of land; instead they gave town charters to approved groups of settlers who in turn elected a committee of their peers to govern matters. Puritans believed in self-government, and every town was to be a little republic unto itself. Because of the Puritan belief in divine revelation through reading the scriptures, everyone had to be literate, and thus public schools were built and staffed as part of the establishment of any town.
Puritans saw themselves as having a mission to convert others; they were fearful of otherness, in particular the Native Americans, who they saw a savages to whom normal moral obligations – like respect of treaties, fair dealing, etc – were not due. “For four decades, Boston ruled the region as the capital of the United Colonies of New England…” and it attempted Yankee coups in Maryland and the Bahamas, annexed the Royalist colony of Maine, and reduced Conneticut, Plymouth and New Hampshire to satellites. Only Rhode Island was exempt.
Chapter 6: Founding New Netherland
New Netherland, as such, lasted from 1624 to 1664 when it was conquered by the English; at that time it extended only to Wall street, and had about 1,500 inhabitants. It was established as a fur trading post, and governed for the first few decades by the Dutch West India Company. In 1643 a Jesuit estimated its population at 500, and the number of languages spoken at 18.
The Dutch were unique among 17th Century Europeans in being committed to free enquiry, freedom of the press, and religious pluralism; it was a haven for persecuted people across Europe. As a free and prosperous country, the Netherlands lacked a stock of people desperate to emigrate. The Dutch tolerated diversity rather than celebrating it; “the Dutch people … had internalized the lessons of Europe’s horrific (and going) religious wars, in which many of their countrymen had perished.”
In 1664 New Amsterdam was taken by surprise by the arrival of a hostile English fleet.
“During a tense standoff, the Dutch negotiated an unusual surrender agreement to ensure the survival of Dutch norms and values. New Netherlanders would keep their business and inheritance laws, property, churches, language, and even their local officials. They could continue trade with the Netherlands, Making New Amsterdam the only city in the world with simultaneous ties to both major trading empires. Most important, religious toleration was ensured.”
Chapter 6: The Colonies’ First Revolt
The English controlled colonies first rebelled in the 1680’s, not as a coalition, but in a series of separate rebellions by Yankeedom, Tidewater and New Netherlands. This was due to the ascension of James II, who wanted to impose discipline and political conformity on the colonies by dissolving representative assemblies, imposing high taxes, and installing military authorities as governors; he also had converted to Catholicism and appointed a number of Catholics to high posts. This also stimulated resistance to James II in Britain – there were two revolts that were put down, but the third involved inviting William of Orange, military leader of the Netherlands, to invade. William of Orange succeeded in replacing James, but although the North American rebellions had succeeded, he did not roll back all of the changes introduced by James II. In particular, he did not restore New Netherlands to the Netherlands.
It was during this period that Maryland, which was largely ruled by Catholics, was transformed into something closely resembling Virginia, with Protestants/Anglicans in the ascendency.
Chapter 7: Founding the Deep South
“From the outset, Deep Southern culture was based on radical disparities in wealth and power, with a tiny elite commanding total obedience and enforcing it with state-sponsored terror. Its expansion ambitions would put it on a collision course with its Yankee rivals, triggering military, social, and political conflicts that continue to plague the United States to this day.”
The founding fathers of the Deep South were the younger sons and grandsons of the founders of the Barbados colonies, which had a horrific slavery system; they introduced chattel slavery to the English-speaking world, and also adopted the gang labor system from South America, wherein slaves were worked to death. As younger sons, the founders were very concerned with maintaining the trappings of aristocracy and the notion that they belonged to a privileged class – this included embracing the Anglican church.
While both the Deep South and Tidewater practiced full-blown slavery, Tidewater had a far lower proportion of slaves – 1 to 1.7 whites – rather the the Deep South’s 5 to 1 ratio. Tidewater also was home to blacks who were not slaves, and until the end of the 17th Century, in Tidewater a person’s position was defined by class rather than race. In contrast, the Deep South had a caste system; the Deep South also, due to the larger number of slaves and higher mortality rate, imported slaves from many countries, and mixed them together, producing a melting pot of African cultures and languages.
Georgia did not start out as part of the Deep South, but rather as a utopian experiment in which poor were given their own farms, with the expectation that work and ownership would cure them of their alleged laziness. However, the paupers were eager to buy slaves, and in 1740’s and 1750’s, South Carolinans seized control of Georgia’s government and ensured the best land was granted to them and their friends, and that a Barbadian style slave code was adopted.
Chapter 8: Founding the Midlands
“From its inception in the 1680’s, the Midlands was a tolerant, multicultural, multilingual civilization populated by families of modest means – many of them religious – who desired mostly that their government and leaders leave them in peace.”
The Midlands was the result of a social experiment by William Penn, son of Admiral William Penn, who received a grant of the 45,000 square miles that made up Pennsylvania as a payoff of debts owed to the admiral by Charles II. Penn envisioned a country where people of different creeds and ethnic backgrounds could live together in harmony and that extended the vote to almost everyone; Penn also envisioned a pacifist government that respected native americans and paid them for land taken. Penn was very well organized, and distributed information about the new colony across England, Ireland, the Netherlands and large swaths of Germany. By 1686 an initial wave of immigration (mostly Quakers?) had resulted in 8,000 people in Pennsylvania.
A second wave of immigration consisted largely of German peasants who were refugees from the Palatine, a war torn area of Germany. They were Protestants, and arrived in large extended families or even as entire villages: 5,000 arrived from 1683-1726, and 57,000 by 1755. Some were Amish, Mennonites and Brethren of Christ; thousands more were mainstream Lutherans and German Calvinists. Penn let them settle their own communities where they could maintain their ethnic identity and religious customs. The Germans adapted to Quaker plans for the new society; they were mainly interested in farming, and endorsed Quaker policies and government. The social plan was a great success; Quaker government, however, was a disaster, due to a lack of interest in governing, doctrinal quarreling, and pacifism in the face of external aggression.
From 1717-1775 over a 100,000 Borderlanders from Scotland and Ireland arrived in Pennsylvania, most going straight to the hilly frontier in central Pennsylvania. The Borderlanders were not in sync with Quaker ideals, and occupied Indian lands without paying for them, pushing tribes into alliance with New France who provided them with weapons. This lead to massacres and armed conflict, which the pacifistic Quakers refused to respond; as a result the Quakers lost control of the government, with Ben Franklin – arrived from Yankeedom – and his allies dominating the political scene for the moment. Also, during this period, Yankees from Conneticut were spreading across northern Pennsylvania and the Wyoming valley.
Chapter 9: Founding Greater Appalachia
The Borderlanders came from the war-torn borderlands of northern Britain — lowland Scotland, northern England, and the Scots-Irish controlled north of Ireland – where they had weathered 800 years of nearly constant warfare. Under such conditions Borderlanders learned to rely only on themselves and their extended families; they were suspicious of any kind of outside authority, and valued individual liberty and honor above all else.
“Life in Britain had taught them not to invest too much time and wealth in fixed property, which was easily destroyed in time of war. Instead, they stored their wealth in a very mobile form: herds of pigs, cattle, and sheep. When they did need cash, they distilled corn into a more portable, storable and valuable product: whiskey… This was a lifestyle that allowed for long periods of leisure… Justice was meted out not by courts but by the aggrieved individuals and their kin via personal retaliation. … [Internal] Dissent or disagreement – whether by neighbors, wives, children or political opponents – was unacceptable and often crushed savagely. … Borderlanders tolerated enormous inequalities within their communities.”
The elite were usually the charismatic heads of “good families,” a tenth of the population who controlled most of the land; the bottom half had no land at all, and survived as tenants of squatters.
In Pennsylvania, Borderlander behavior lead to conflicts with the Indians – the authorities had encouraged them to go the frontier where they might form a buffer between native Americans and the more docile settlers — and in 1763 a conflict led to the formation of a Borderlander army of 1,500 that marched on Philadelphia intending to murder more peaceful Native Americans who had fled there. Benjamin Franklin saved the day, negotiating with the Borderlanders, whose chief demand was proper representation in the provincial assembly (Midlanders had twice as many representatives per capita).
Elsewhere the Borderlanders had spread down the Appalachian mountains, and as their society became codified, the have-nots turned to crime and gangs to support themselves. In response, the elite organized vigilante gangs – most prominently the Regulators – to hunt down outlaws from Georgia to Virginia. They also drove of sherrifs and judges sent by the regional governments, and demanded proportional representation in the various state legislatures.
At various times, Borderlanders tried to form their own governing entities: the Fair Play territory in Pennsylvania (50 families, for 5 years); the state of Transylvannia in eastern Tennessee and central Kentucky(1775).
Parts 2 & 3
The second part of the book describes the interactions among the nations in the American revolution, emphasizing that the revolution was by no means unanimous, and that some were mostly neutral (Midlanders), and some were divided (Borderlanders), and some mostly loyalists (Tidewater; Deep South), depending on where they thought their interests lay.
The third part of the book discussed the spread of four nations – Yankeedom, the Midlands, Appalachia, and the Deep South – to the west, and the conquest of El Norte and founding of the Left Coast.
Chapter 20: Founding the Left Coast
The majority of the Left Coast’s early immigrants were Yankees, hoping to found another New England; they didn’t wholly succeed, but did imprint the stamp of utopian idealism. Early on New Englanders (along with New France) had the best understanding of West Coast conditions due to their long distance ship-borne fur trade. Various missionaries from Yankeedom organized settlement expeditions, driven in part by fear of Catholicism. Although the Yankees created a provisional government in the Oregon Territory in 1843, within a few months an expedition of Borderlanders arrived, doubling the population of the Williamette Valley. As time went on, Borderlanders came to outnumber Yankees 15 to 1, but the Yankees settled in towns and controlled civic institutions, whereas Borderlanders developed farms in the countryside. Yankees also settled in southern California, where they blended with El Norte culture.
“In what was one of the largest spontaneous migrations in human history to that point, 300,000 arrived in California in just 5 years.” The influx of population prompted another Yankee mission effort, with 10,000 Yankees arriving over the course of a few years. Still, Yankees succeeded only in establishing a cultural presence on the coast, whereas inland California was populated by a diverse array of peoples from across the world. “The coast blended the moral, intellectual and utopian impulses of a Yankee elite with the self-sufficient individualism of its Appalachian and immigrant majority. The culture that formed – idealistic but individualistic – was unlike that of the gold-digging lands in the interior but very similar to those in western Oregon and Washington. It would take nearly a century for its people to recognize it, but it was a new regional culture, one that would ally with Yankeedom to change the federation.”
Part 4
Part four is titled “Culture Wars”, and takes up a variety of issues from 1878 to 2010.
Chapter 21: Founding the Far West
This chapter argues that the nature of the Western environment blocked grassroots immigration, and instead required large amounts of corporate and/or government infrastructure to make settlement tractable. This, in effect, led to the establishment of corporate colonies, which were primarily focused on extracting resources and exploiting populations, and where the local governments fell under the sway of the corporations or other entities that controlled the local economies. It argues that the legacy of this colonialism, and the continued influence of large corporate entities, is responsible for the Far West’s hostility to government, and to environmental regulation.
“The Far West, uniquely in North America, is a nation defined not by ethnoregional forces but by the demands of external institutions. It is the one place where environment really did trump the cultural heritage of settlers, imposing challenges that Euro-Americans tried to solve through the deployment of capital-intensive technologies: hard rock mines, railroads, telegraphs, Gatling guns, barbed wire, and hydroelectric dams. As a result, the Far West has long been an internal colony of the continent’s older nations and federal government, which possessed the necessary capital. Its people are still often deeply resentful of their dependent status but have generally backed policies guaranteed to preserve the status quo.”
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